


Lemondrop

by seraphcelene



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-13
Updated: 2016-06-13
Packaged: 2018-07-14 19:15:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7186733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphcelene/pseuds/seraphcelene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Whitman ... like glittering wax butterflies. Missing scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lemondrop

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiled for Mad Men 1.11 - Indian Summer; Summary from Maybe Memories by The Used. Unbeta'd. Mad Men and all characters belong to Matthew Weiner, Lionsgate, et al. I'm just taking them for a spin around the block.

There were still a few nickles and dimes scattered at the bottom of the wide mouthed jar that Adam kept on the shelf in the closet beside his worn and battered suitcase. The jar was very similar to the old jelly jars that his brother used to fill with water for the hobos who stopped at the front gate during the summer. The hobos never stayed long, Adam remembers, loitering only long enough to gulp down the water and rest against the gate. Once, Dick had told him that they left messages for each other on that weathered bit of wood, messages that only other hobos knew how to read. And, perhaps, Dick who would wait with them, talking, one hand thrust deep into his pants pocket.

The jar in the closet used to be filled to overflowing with all of the coins Adam collected at night while cleaning the offices in the Empire State building -- pennies under the sink in the men's room, quarters beneath the sofa cushions if he could get to them before the maids. Although, that felt a little too much like poaching, so mostly he plundered the wide expanse of the floors and the crevices where the carpets met the wall. Aside from the couches, Adam knew all the best places to look. Sometimes, he imagined leaving marks on the walls, messages to the other janitors about the best places to find lost change.

One Monday, Adam carefully counted out the contents of the jar. That Tuesday he went to a hardware store.

"Dollar forty-two," said the clerk behind the counter. He was an older gentlemen, balding. His pale blue eyes were the color of sun bleached Levi's. The name tag pinned to the front of his shirt read Henry.

Adam plunked a handful of coins down onto the counter one at a time. Henry's eyes flicked back and forth between Adam's face and the slow, deliberate snap of the coins against the counter. When Adam was done, one dollar and forty-two cents worth of coins shined up at them and Henry brushed the change from the counter and into the cup of his palm with the easy swipe of one hand. The callouses on his thumbs reminded Adam of Dick and the summer Adam learned to tie knots.

The flash of memory and nostalgia that flooded Adam's brain momentarily shorted his intentions. He stood there, frozen, and watched his good luck kachinging into the cash register drawer and someone else's pocket.

 _The rope was too deliberate_ , he thought. _Too obvious._ And the man's hands reminded Adam of Dick's.

So when Henry stuffed the rope into a bag with the receipt and held it out to Adam, Adam stared at the hands holding the bag, at those callouses, turned and left the store.

***

Adam muttered under his breath, a sigh of sound that barely registered as a hum in his own ears, as he carefully stepped over the copper coin winking dully at him from the shiny linoleum floor.

"See a penny, pick it up."

He placed the package that he carried, rectangular and wrapped in brown paper, on the counter of the front desk. The man behind the desk picked up the package and gently turned it over in his hands:

Donald Draper  
405 Madison Ave.

"That's going to be about forty cents," he said.

Adam threw a five dollar bill onto the counter in reply. He didn't wait for the change and the penny remained uncollected on the floor.

***

He'd thought about this, about the shape and angle of his life, hoping to figure out the pattern, to identify where he had gone so very wrong and how he'd ended up so completely alone. There'd been no answers in the bottom of the first whiskey bottle or the second or the third.

He never got around to buying that rope.

On Wednesday, Adam left his box of memories at the front desk, addressed to a stranger wearing his brother's face. The money he left on the table beside the window -- five thousand dollars minus the twenty dollars that he had spent on the new suit. Respectable, black, it came with a shirt and tie.

Adam scrawled one word onto a blank scrap of paper and left it on the table beside the money: Enjoy.

Adam removed his belt, flung it over the exposed ceiling pipes, and that was that. Easy as it gets. A clean slate, and it turned out that he didn't need a rope and he didn't need to lie. The writing on the wall was clear, the sign posts to Heaven clearly marked. Maybe his brother would be waiting for him at the gate, an old jelly jar full of water in one hand.


End file.
